Breathe
by LightningPage
Summary: The Avatar is dead, but the world seems to need her more than ever now. What a conundrum. / Or, Korra's airbending is all she has left.
1. Air

**Warning: Long chapter is long.**

* * *

_Breathe. _Onetwothree_breathe_, onetwothree_breathe._

Her fingers, bare and bitten with cold, reach out to the icy shores below. She can no longer feel the push and pull, not even deep in her bones, not even like she used to when she was a child. She misses the easy flow of her body, the icy spray hastily kissing her face. She misses it so bad she can practically _taste _the ice. She moves her hands, but the water does not sway with her, does not follow her painstaking, _patient _movements, does not _bend. _The ice in her mouth decays into something rancid and bitter.

_Breathe. _Onetwothree _breathe_, onetwothree _breathe_.

_Earthbending is for the strong_, her old tutor had said after watching the earth buck and roll underneath her small, tiny feet. She had known this ever since she was a little girl and had first persuaded the earth to move with her. She had been the girl who had skipped home with tears in her clothes and hair disarrayed, who hadn't been afraid to get roughed up during her childhood games with the other waterbenders, and although her parents despaired and lamented over her recklessness, she had always been proud. She had always been strong. _Earthbending is for the strong, _he had said. Now she cannot even feel the earth underneath her tough, callused feet.

_Breathe_. Onetwothree _breathe_, onetwothree_ breathe._

All of her tutors had always criticized her fatal flaw, her insufferable _impatience. _But she couldn't help it. The fire in her belly, the eager brightness in her eyes, the constant need for movement in her limbs. It was _part _of her. The moment she had thrown herself into firebending training, she loved it with a fierce, searing passion. Firebending, more than any of the other elements, had come easy to her, because of the fire already coursing through her limbs, beating like a summer heart in her chest. Short but quick spurts of fire shooting from her knuckles, swimming through curls of orange and red and gold, flame whispering in and out, in and out and tickling her palm with its gentle heat. Sparks torching her lungs, flames roaring from a well-placed kick, wreathed in curtains of molten sunlight—that was when she was truly alive.

(And now the fire in her veins has gone to smoke, extinguished with the simple press of a thumb.)

As though the remaining embers had been sparked by the thought of the—the _injustice, _the _unfairness_—a spurt of fire leaps inside her, and she angrily punches her fist forward, imagining a water whip reeling, rocks sailing, fire collapsing the bare winter landscape in a silvery cascade, but instead, a tunnel of wind bursts from her smarting knuckletips, and shoots downward to shatter on a particularly sharp icicle and scatter into a million fragile, futile, helpless pieces.

She screams, and churns tornadoes into the cold, still air with the strength of her fury (not strong enough to earthbend), forces the water back from the shore with reckless explosions (not truly waterbending) and melts the snow straight off the side of the craggy cliff with merciless hot blasts (not nearly hot enough to firebend) and in the end slumps to her knees, weeping hot tears of what used to be fire down her cheeks.

_Breathe. _Onetwothree _breathe_, onetwothree _breathe._

* * *

"I've already tried my best, I'm afraid, Korra, and there's nothing I can do—"

"Try harder!" It bursts out of her, the white-hot packet of restlessness that had been pulsing in her chest all day. Instead of meeting Katara's quietly disappointed eyes, she glares very pointedly at the corner of the small stone pool.

"Sorry." She practically spits it out.

Onetwothree _breathe_. Onetwothree _breathe_. There's about ten beats of silence in which Korra scowls hard up at a whorl in the ceiling, fingers opening and closing reflexively, before Katara gently sighs. "I suppose," she says heavily, "we can always try again."

Korra pulls her lips into a brittle smile to satisfy her old teacher. "Thanks, Katara," she manages to say, and then sinks down into the pool, feeling a silky sweep of water spill over her as she did so and briefly entertaining the idea that the reflexive movements of her fingers had brought it about.

Spirits, she thinks as Katara's band of healing water shimmers through her body, aches and pains melting along with it, what wouldn't she give to just make the tiniest eddy in the smallest bucket of water…

The healing session is over within ten minutes. Korra's eyes instantly shoot open as she instinctively feels for where her bending used to be, but all she can find is a cool stirring of air.

She groans and tips her head back, resolving to drown in this stupid stone pool that was _supposed _to be healing her, _supposed _to be bringing her _stupid _bending back—

"_Argh_." The frustrated noise puffs out through her lips, blowing that annoying lock of hair off of her forehead.

"Patience." Katara's voice sounds as fragile as Korra feels. "Healing takes time."

_Patience, Korra. Be patient, Korra. Now, don't be so impatient, Korra. Remember your patience, Korra_. Some of the old fire flares once more as the familiar words told to her so many times over the past couple weeks slide into her brain, and she arcs her hand down in a sweeping motion, coaxing a strong gust of wind that sends droplets soaring and splattering out of the stone tub.

Katara says nothing.

Face fixed in a stormy glare, the waterbender—_airbender_—flings herself out of the tub, toweling her hair until it had dried out to a mat of frizz, and walks in cool, quick steps over to the window. Outside, the younger children play, tag and hide-and-go-seek and waterbending snowmen after each other but mostly running around in an incoherent, laughing, mindlessly joyful brew. One little girl falls and skids a long way, but ignores the long scratch down her leg and throws herself once more into the brawl. She is laughing so much and so hard that the whole area around her seems to be illuminated by a nimbus of carelessly elated, wild light.

Onetwothree_ breathe_, onetwothree _breathe_.

"Are you going to the Glacier Spirits Festival?" Katara asks, apprehensively eyeing her with a wary blue eye.

Korra feels the edges of her mouth twist as if she had just sucked on a lemon. She sullenly scuffs at a loose pebble on the floor with her bare foot. "Mmmn. Maybe."

Katara quietly begins to drain the tub. "Your uncle's ship should be here right about now."

"Yeah?"

"His scary children too."

The warmth of a giggle stirs briefly in her chest, but after realizing this was a deliberate ploy to make her laugh, she forces it down.

But Katara is more stubborn than Korra would have given her credit for. "Maybe your friends will go with you to the festival."

"No." Korra says flatly. "They'd be back in Republic City by now." She doesn't think she could bare it—she briefly imagines Mako on one side of a table, and her on the other, the frozen, unreturned _I love you _hanging inbetween them like a barrier, she imagines Bolin chatting away obliviously to nothing, she imagines Asami's concerned emerald eyes and the fragilely spoken words, as if Korra were glass. A wind swirls somewhere in the pit of her stomach and around the room, loosely tousling her messy hair.

No, she couldn't do it. Not for an instant. She'd break down, just like she had on that icy cliffside three months ago, she would show weakness—she was supposed to be the Avatar, but all she had left now was her pride. She'd cling to that like it was her life vessel.

The last _swoosh _of bubbly water gurgles down the drain, and Katara stands to join her by the window.

"You're lucky, you know," she says conversationally.

She's taken aback for a second. "_What_?"

"You're still a bender, aren't you?"

Korra remembers what the leader of the White Lotus had said when she'd told him the same thing, lips downturned in disapproval and face like frost, ridged with disappointment. "The world's got a thousand benders," she replies bitterly, "But only one Avatar." She watches her face contort into an unrecognizable scowl in the window. "Now we don't even have that anymore—"

"Can you go into the Avatar State?"

The question's abrupt, and it catches her off-guard. Her face falls into her hands before she even knows she's answering. "No. No, I-I've been _trying_. I've never done it before. How can I go into the Avatar State when right now I only can bend _one _element?" Frustration seeps into her words like cracks spreading into glass, but Katara still places her thin fingers soothingly on her shoulder. Katara had always been unafraid of Korra's temper, even when she was a little girl and prone to setting things such as Katara's favorite rug on fire when she got angry.

"Maybe it's not as impossible as you think," Katara begins, ever optimistic. "Avatars have been known to go into the Avatar State without having mastered _any _of the elements. These things just take time."

_Time_. Her worst enemy. Because time was always against her, wasn't it, keeping her stranded at the South Pole, helpless, handicapped, while Republic City struggled to dig itself out of Amon's ugly whirlpool of destruction, the lack of benders and the loss of a police chief dragging the city to its knees, without the Avatar to pull it back up, keep the balance—

_Breathe. _Her teeth begin to worry at her ragged fingernails again. It's an unfortunate habit that she's picked up in the last couple months.

"Tell me," Katara says, "that you'll at least _try_."

Korra closes her eyes.

"Fine, then," she says feebly, trying to throw some of her old breezy confidence back in her voice. "I'll give it a shot."

* * *

Well. It wasn't _exactly _a lie.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Korra would wake up, heart thudding a rapid, staccato rhythm against her ribcage with dreamlike shreds of a man in a mask and Mako on his knees and a thumb on her forehead lingering at the edges of her vision and feel something burn restlessly underneath her skin. Her fingers would flex automatically, like they did when she was bending, as something inside of her pulsed insistently with her heartbeat, warming her skin and reminding her of the days when the fire had constantly pumped through her veins. Intangible voices whispered at the corners of her mind, but when she tried to focus on them, they slithered away. Some nights, the insistent burn was so hot she was sure that she'd look down to find black char withering deep into her skin.

The true Avatar State emerged once you had mastered all four elements. She had been told that countless times since she'd discovered, as a young waterbender, she was also able to bend fire. And so she had. She could feel the Avatar State inside her constantly, like an unscratchable itch, but it was blurry and hazy and if she tried to focus on it the itch would seal right back up. She half-listened to her past lives' insistent murmuring, but when she turned her full attention to them the voices scattered and vanished.

The Avatar State was still inside her, and that gave her hope. But she didn't dare tell anybody about it—it would jinx it somehow. And besides, she thought that night gloomily before blowing out her candle and sliding into her stiff, unfamiliar bed, what was hope was there at all when she was an Avatar without her bending?

That night, she couldn't feel the pulse at all. Just her own heartbeat and the waves shattering against the jagged shores.

* * *

"Hello there." His steps click steadily towards her off of the smooth icy pathway. "You wouldn't happen to know the way to the Glacier Spirits Festival, would you?"

_Head down, head down, head down. Onetwothree _breathe_, _Korra—

She gently adjusts the smooth curve of her parka hood over distinctive electric blue eyes. "No, sir." She addresses the ground. "I'm sorry."

She can feel Unalaq's baleful gaze wrapping around her like a vice. "Hmmm." Her uncle says, voice practically _dripping _with suspicion. His arms fold across his chest. "Well, at any rate, it's not an appropriate time for a young lady like yourself to be out and about, no? I'll help take you home, if you don't mind."

Korra instinctively takes a step backwards. "Thank you, sir, but it's no trouble," she trills, trying to slightly heighten her voice. "I can find my own way home."

Unalaq's lips purse disapprovingly. "Nonsense." He reaches out to her.

Well, nothing else to do now. Korra swirls around and attempts to make a run for it, marginally slipping on the slick stretch of ice—

But Unalaq's foot catches her trailing cloak, and it glides off of her to crumple on the ground, leaving her cold, exposed, and apparent.

For a millisecond, her breath freezes on her lips. She slowly pivots and struggles for a smile. "Er, hi there, Uncle."

Unalaq's false smile comes to him much more easily. "Korra, you must know that after all these years even _you _can't hide from me. Have I stayed away for so long?"

Korra lets out a long breath she wasn't even aware that she was holding and slumps over in a posture of defeat with her hands stuffed sullenly in her pockets, manners be damned. "Guess so," she mutters. "Can I have my cloak back, please, Uncle?"

To Unalaq's credit, he doesn't ask her for what purpose the cloak was serving, but to dock off those newly earned points his booted foot is still resting firmly on the long black cloth. "Why the rush? I haven't seen you in years, the least I could do is offer you some warmth and shelter for the night." He bends down to pick up the cloak, but keeps the dark folds imprisoned like silky waterfalls inside his fingers. "Come by the house that your father has _graciously _provided for my children and I. I'm sure I have some tea leaves left from our voyage."

Korra can't say that she's ever been on the trapping end of her uncle's famed weaselly words, but it isn't a nice experience. She'd been hoping to visit the Glacier Spirits Festival under the enjoyable darkness of disguise—after all, she had never missed it in all her seventeen years and though she _certainly _wasn't taking any of Katara's advice, maybe the gaudy lights and the constant cacophany of laughter and the feeling of losing yourself in a giddy swirl of elation that usually accompanied the festival would lift her mood just a tad.

But as she avoids her uncle's prying ice-needle-razor eyes, Korra's certain that this is the universe's way of telling her that she's not the Avatar anymore, doesn't deserve these childish illusions.

She'd given up her right to them, hand-in-hand with her bending.

"All right, then." It slides clumsily off of her tongue, conflicted by the snappish _fine _she wanted to toss at him.

"Good girl. Come, now, it's getting cold." _It's the South Pole, you idiot, of course it's fucking cold._

_ And I'll take my cloak back_, she adds to the bitter stew in her head, swiping it out of his fist the moment he turns.

* * *

"I'm sorry for not coming to visit sooner, truly, I am." A weak fire sputters underneath the porcelain belly of Unalaq's tea kettle, embellished with the crest of the Northern Water Tribe. "Especially with my niece being the own Avatar, and all—" He raises his teacup to her in a small toast, surveying her with a vaguely fond smile. Korra sits silently in the armchair across from her uncle's, face straining as she fought the urge to glare furiously. It wasn't Unalaq's fault he had placed her next to the blazing hearth. "—I do still regret not being there for your waterbending training." With a smooth flick of his hand, a river of water flows out of a nearby jug and rushes neatly underneath the kettle, putting out the fire. He elegantly lifts the kettle off the counter and pours a new generous surplus of tea into his own cup. "Mmmn. Delicious. How _is _that going, by the way? Your Avatar duties."

_Onetwothree, onetwothree_. Korra takes a long, slow sip of her own tea, ignoring the scalding flow of heat over her vulnerable taste buds to avoid answering.

"Unless, of course—" Unalaq's teacup _chinks _back onto his saucer as he gives her the full ice of his gaze, "the rumors are true."

The fire splutters in its grate as Korra forgets how to breathe. Her fingers absently flex around the teacup handle, and a strong gust of wind around their ankles is Unalaq's answer.

_I can airbend!_

Unalaq's upper lip wrinkles. For the merest second of a second, Korra sees a slight smear of contempt daubed on his face, but in the next second it is gone.

"I'd feared as much." He slides his saucer onto the counter and sighs, long and loud, lacing his fingers into his lap. "You see, Korra, I admittedly did not come here just to watch the spirits be mocked in a childish carnival."

He looks at her as if he expects her to say something.

"Huh. Yeah. Right," she offers weakly.

"I actually came here for a favor. From the _Avatar_."

_You're the Avatar_, a golden-eyed boy had once said, _and I'm an idiot_.

The Avatar—

An _idiot_—

_I'm the Avatar. And I'm an _idiot_._

"Yeah? What sort of favor?"

Unalaq waves a nonchalant hand outside, toward the swirling masses of snow and the diamond-paned glass windows. "Did you know, Korra, that a long time ago spirits used to dance in the sky of the South Pole, just as they do for the North?"

Before Korra can say anything more than _nope_, he stands and strides over to the window, gazing out over the smattering of villages with a keen, hungry look applied to his razor-sharp face.

"During the hundred-year war, the Southern Water Tribe was thrown out of balance, and the lights of the spirits vanished. Instead of dancing in the sky, they are now swirling in a gigantic storm called the Everstorm, bringing nothing but chaos to the Southern Water Tribe."

"And what could the Avatar do about that?" As he turns back toward her, Korra takes another draught of tea to calm her jangling nerves. _Onetwothree, onetwothree_.

The Avatar is dead, but the world still seems to need her. What a conundrum.

"The spirits are restless because the Spirit Portal of the Southern Tribe has been closed for thousands of years—well, as the Avatar, you should know this better than anyone, but the Southern Portal _must _be open in order for there to be balance."

His hands lock on either side of the arms of Korra's chair, and he stoops down to face her. "Only the Avatar can open the portal."

Korra holds his ice-tipped gaze for as long as she can, then finishes off the dregs of her tea. "You know, I'm not sure if you've heard," she said, "but the Avatar's _dead_."

(The Avatar State suddenly spurts within her, like a white-hot weed, and she starts in her chair, tea sloshing over the side of her cup. Voices flutter anxiously about the edges of her mind, but the moment she turns her full attention to them they dissipate like a candle under a blast of frost, leaving behind a single word trailed in smoke. _Alive_.)

She does take a little pleasure in seeing shock dilute Unalaq's pupils, before they suddenly flare, wreathed in mixed anger and disbelief.

"Well," he breathes, shoving himself off of the chair in a fluid, elegant motion. The diplomatic front withers off of him like a second skin. "Then you can rot your time here in this winter wasteland, Avatar, for the rest of your life while you neglect your duties. Frankly, I don't care. But for the love of the Spirits, before you moan and complain and stamp your feet out here forevermore, please, do this _one thing_." His eyes, so frosted blue in comparison to the rage leaching into his face, lock onto hers.

No.

Unalaq was just like the others. He didn't understand, and really, Korra hadn't expected him to. It was just like all of them, to not understand that she had _lost _what made her the Avatar, what had taken her thirteen years to master.

All it had taken was the simple press of a thumb. And the Avatar was dead.

Korra stares him back in the face with a sort of calm that she never possessed. "You," she says, tone all glass and steel and platinum, "can't tell me what to _do_." And she stands and pivots, relishing the feel of her ponytail hastily whipping across his chin as she snatched up her cloak. "See you later, Uncle."

And she makes a run for the door, but not before another lash of her uncle's words, tipped with lethal venom, bites her in the back.

"Even if you claim to no longer be the Avatar anymore, you were once. Surely you _must _have _some _degree of justice left inside of you?"

Her hands curl into ready fists at her side, ready to turn around and punch, _fwoosh_, a roar of fire, _swipe_, her uncle's pretty little teaset and ornate rug and that _smug _expression, all charred with ash and gone up in flames—

"Or are you so _blinded _by your own clumsy errors that you're content to abuseyour duties while the people in the world starve and weep and clamor for their Avatar?"

Korra stood there for one beat. Two. Three. She pressed her lips together, and she practically tore the hood back over her head.

"The world should learn to live without its Avatar. It's going to have to," she bites back.

And Korra disappears into the darkness.

* * *

**.**

**.**

**.**

* * *

_Onetwothree _breathe, _onetwothree _breathe.

_Since when did it become so hard to just _breathe? Because air is exploding out of her frozen lips in harsh white clouds, quickly being whisked away by the stinging winds wracking the South Pole, but Spirits _damn _it, she can't seem to suck a single molecule of air back into her shriveled lungs.

_Onetwothree_breathe_onetwothree_breathe.

_Keep going_. A faint whisper tickles the edge of her unconsciousness. _Don't stop_.

Korra can feel the Avatar State slipping through her veins like silver beads of mercury, like a frozen flower sitting dull and dead in the middle of her chest. A flower refusing to blossom.

_Don't stop, Korra_.

I know, she silently murmurs to the voice stirring at the corners of her brain, I _know_, Aang—

_Keep going. Don't stop. Breathe_.

I know. I know. I know. I _know_.

* * *

_The jangling ditty of the radio had become a constant soundtrack in their little cottage, an endless stream of pro-bending matches and current events. The Fire Ferrets, as predicted, had become her favorite team, and when the match ended (miserably for the Ferrets, who had lost their spark with Mako and Korra) she spun the dial, looking for the news station. _

_ "—While Republic City and its remaining benders may well rejoice with the terror of Amon now extinguished, we all still have cause to worry. What with the loss of Chief Beifong's bending, the loss of half of our city's beloved benders, and most importantly the loss of the Avatar_—"

_Korra gives the dial another vicious turn._

_ "—Well, Mr. Shinobi, nobody is denying that this has been a disastrous turn of events—Amon may be gone, but his shadow most certainly still remains looming over the city. Take that and combine it with the abounding rumors that the Avatar can only airbend, yes, _only _airbend now—"_

_ Turn. Click._

_ "—I'm not one to listen to gossip, but the stories that I've heard about the Avatar, recently_—"

_Turn. Click. Turn. Click. Turn. Click._

* * *

Is she even going the right way anymore? When she'd first set out, she had set out with the promising-looking swirling mass of painful pinks and cobalt blues and sickly greens lurking far away in the midnight sky. Now that repeated fists of ice-tipped snow was pounding into her and threatening to tear her off her feet, it was a bit hard to look for what Unalaq had called the Everstorm.

But she tries, anyway. Keeping a blue-gloved hand protectively over her forehead, she glances upward, chunks of dark hair cutting into her vision.

A breathtaking landscape of glaring white stares Korra back in the face. But then again, that's what she gets for venturing out into the South Pole in the middle of the night.

_Use your Avatar instincts_. Tenzin's voice, unwelcome and foreign, creeps back into her head after all these months. _Use your instincts_.

When was the last time her instincts had been right?

_Try, Korra. Just _try_._

She lets her eyes slip shut and ever-so-slightly extends her hands from her hips, listening, feeling for something out there.

She sways to her right, attracted by some invisible magnetic pull.

_Use your instincts_.

So she shakes her hair back and yanks her hood back over her head, squaring her shoulders, and for a second she is her old self again.

She sets off in pursuit of the Everstorm.

* * *

_The little girl with the wild, careless elation hanging off of her like a coat is pushed to the ground during one of the children's games and spills to the ground, slipping horizontally across the ice. When she dazily sits up, a deep gash is sliced neatly into her leg, blood sneaking in haphazard cracks along the cut._

_ Korra stands from her stool by the window as a watchful parent rushes over and comes to drag the girl away to Katara, and she flexes her fingers before realizing _oh_._

_ The water does not come._

You're not a healer anymore.

_Korra pours the remains of her glass of water into the sink. She doesn't feel thirsty anymore._

* * *

The spirit rushes at her, a long and violent scream trailing behind it, and when she turns around to meet it she's totally unprepared.

"_Oof_!"

The spirit rams into her and sends Korra tumbling across the winter landscape, her precious breath flying out of her every time she slams into the ground. When she hits the ground for the last time, she stays there, struggling to wrench frozen pocketfuls of air from the merciless wind as the dark spirit circles around her, displeased with the invasion of its territory.

_Breathe_.

"Get _away_," she snaps at it. It hisses reproachfully at her, golden symbols flaring in its unreasonable rage.

She turns her back on it.

But when it tries to rush her again, Korra is _ready_.

She swirls around and meets it with a vortex of wind so powerful that the the winds currently ambushing her are jostled out of the way and that the spirit is instantly repelled. As it shakes itself off and prepares to dive again, she moves like a snake. Punch, punch, punch, _whoosh, whoosh, whoosh_. Just when it looks like the spirit's about to wither away, she turns gracefully in a waterbending move, slashing her leg through the air. The resulting scream of air barrels forward and Korra's surpised it doesn't _slice _the damned spirit in half.

Recognizing her as a formidable foe, the spirit screams one more, but sullenly spins away into the windy night.

* * *

_Unalaq's cerulean eyes lock on hers across the table, and he smiles—the same skeletal, diplomatic smile that he had patiently worn for her all through the night when she turned him down._

_ He steals the opportunity when her father stands from the dinner table to speak with some excitable inventor with a bespectacled brunette trailing constantly in his wake. He leans gently over to her and whispers, "Have you given any thought to my offer?"_

_ Korra stabs sullenly at the penguin meat sitting slumped over in the centerpiece of her plate. She can't think of a thing that looks any less appetizing right now. "I've given it _lots _of thought," she says, and slides the penguin meat off her fork with her teeth just in time to give her uncle a huge, winning smile. Unalaq's upper lip slightly contorts at its edges and his own smile becomes oddly fixed._

_ She wasn't the Avatar, and you had to _deal _with it._

_ "I understand that the decision is…difficult," he says, slicing his own slab of penguin meat. "But surely you must have realized by now that I would not ask this of you if it was not your sworn _duty_."_

_ Korra hurriedly glances up at her father. He's still politely engaged with…Vernon, is his name? "Look, I _have _given it some thought," she hisses under her breath. "And I know that if it's anyone's job, it should be the Avatar's, but the problem is—"_

_ "Exactly," Unalaq cuts her off and leans back in his chair, a satisfied gleam in his eye. "You claim to not be the Avatar, and that might be true. But who else is close enough to the description?"_

_ "Look, I can see where you're coming from but—"_

_ "But nothing." Unalaq stands in his chair and presses his immaculately folded napkin to his lips before draining off the last of his wine._

_ Tonraq holds up a hand to stop—spirits, Vadick? Viktor?—the businessman's torrent of words. "Leaving so soon, brother?"_

_ "Yes, if you'll excuse me, brother. I am still quite exhausted from my trip, and my children have already retired."_

_ "Well, then, good night." Tonraq reluctantly turns back to face whatever-his-name, and Unalaq bends down over the table to look Korra in the eyes, ice-blue to sapphire. _

_ "Without the Southern Spirit Portal opened, the Southern Water Tribe will be plagued by the darkness of the Spirits for the rest of time," he quietly said. "Would you like that to be on _your _shoulders, Korra?"_

* * *

She manages to fend the remains of the dark spirits off with her airbending, stirring a reckless kind of joy somewhere in a hollow part of her chest that hadn't been filled in a while—the joy of fighting, of _movement_, of her own graceful _skill_—before she reaches the center of the Everstorm.

The location of the portal turns out to be a practical mass of ice, a place practically dead of the winds that had bullied her all those hours ago, with a pale blue core glowing steadily at its center.

Korra stares it down, her fists opening and closing at her side. _Onetwothree_breathe_, onetwothree_breathe. _Don't stop_. The voice of a long-dead Avatar peeps from some distant pocket of her mind. _Don't give up, Korra_.

_Yeah, I know_, she wishes she could snap back, along with, _where were you when I was getting my bending taken away? _

She opens her hands once more and lifts them in front of her face. Skinny, brittle fingers that had once held so much power. Weathered palms that could snap the earth along its crust, twist a sheet of water into a razor-ice-whip, punch tunnels of blue flame. Veins that had once pumped with fire.

She would feel so much safer going into the Spirit Portal with the fire back in her veins.

_Onetwothree_breathein, _onetwothree_breatheout. She rotates her neck with a sharp _cracking _sound, and reaches her arms out in front of her, stretching, loosening up all the muscles that hadn't been stretched in over a month.

So yeah, _maybe _she wasn't the Avatar anymore.

But that didn't mean Just-Korra couldn't do a lot of damage either.

_You're ready, Korra._ The voice tickling the back of her head is as calm and poised as a cool breath of wind.

Well, she has Aang's confidence. That's something.

So she plunges into the twisted mass of ice, fists at the ready and breaths long and easy.

* * *

_Even from several feet away, she can still see Mako's pupils dilate, like ants trapped in amber, at the sight of the white-red mask looming ominously over his face._

_ Amon's thumb closes over the center of his forehead._

_ She can't breathe. She can't breathe. She can't _breathe_._

_ No, no, you won't take anything else away—spirits damn you, _monster_—_

_ "No!_"

_A strong course of wind bursts from her desperate fist and sails down the hallway, knocking Amon off of his feet and sending Mako tumbling to the ground, eyes widening in shock as he looks at the Avatar-who-wasn't-the-Avatar as she looks, amazed, at her hands._

_ At the power that was still in them._

_ "I can airbend!"_

* * *

The floor of the icy cavern looks like it was cut from a sapphire—all gleaming pale facets and smooth-hewn edges. Korra hesitantly shuffles into the open space, her fingers tracing off of the frosted sides of the cave.

A glowing silver sphere, the source of the light in the dark, throbs in the center of the floor. The moment she looks upon it, warmth begins to slide through her frozen system, coaxing feeling back into her goosefleshed arms and legs.

"The Spirit Portal," she whispers to herself, surprised when the words don't come out as a white puff of air.

A symphony of whispers kicks off once more in her brain at the words, spreading from the obscure edges to pervade her mind like a fog. Korra winces and grazes her fingers against her temples, wishing not for the first time that she had the icy numbness that her water healing brought.

Power pulses gently at her fingertips, and encouraged, she glides along the level slickness of the floor until she is standing directly on top of the Spirit Portal, feeling its energy pulse into her toes and pump waves of power through her body like an electric wave, slightly lifting her hair off her shoulders.

She reaches down to touch it.

But something curls around her leg before she can move any farther.

* * *

_The feeling of bloodbending, of somebody seizing her and taking hold, shoots up through her bloodstream like nausea. Her legs immediately cramp up, and her fingers shiver to a slow halt._

_ The panic that she'd so _relished _seeing in Amon's eyes flattens out to a vague pleasure, and he extends both of his arms to keep her locked in place._

_ "No—" She straightens up, spine crackling with the effort. "You—" She cocks her fist behind one ear, entire body trembling. "DON'T!"_

* * *

Korra spins around to face the leering golden symbols of a dark spirit slowly dragging her away from the Portal. As she struggles, beating her fists and attempting to find a hold on the unnaturally smooth floor, a flood of spirits begin flowing in from cracks in the wall and wrap around her, pulling her upwards and away from the portal.

She punches, and she screams, torrents of air threatening to flatten them again the roof, but they're relentless, crazily determined to keep the one human who had wandered in here after so long to disturb their peace.

No. Spirits (of the light, anyway) help her, she would _not _be known as the only Avatar to lose her bending and then disappear off the face of the earth without having _done _anything—

_You beat Amon_.

That gives her an idea.

"No—you—_don't_!" She frees both hands long enough to punch them out in front of her and send tornadoes roaring at the dark spirits, who manage to scatter and leave her tumbling to the ground just in time.

The constant mumbling in her brain all condenses into one, powerful voice.

_YOU ARE THE AVATAR._

And just before she hits the ground, the Avatar State blooms in her chest, and a roar of power hits her like a tsunami.

* * *

_ I told you I would destroy you._

**_._**

**_._**

**_._**

And you _failed, _she thinks.

* * *

She stands, hovering in midair, eyes frosted silver and hair crackling with washes of electricity and _laughs_.

The Avatar State tastes like victory, and in that instant that it spreads cheetah-quick through her veins, replacing the hollow arteries that once held fire with _lightning, _she knows that she is the most powerful being on Earth.

The spirits immediately shy away, dissipating into their cracks in the walls and fleeing into the night, and Korra raises her fists in the chair, churning the wind with her strength. And she drives her fist into the glowing sphere trapped beneath the ice, and a green pillar shoots like a burgeoning weed up, up, up, up—

And spirals out into a brilliant array of greens and blues and pinks and golds and silvers, bleeding vermillion and periwinkle into the inky sky, looking like—

Looking almost like—

"Spirits dancing in the sky," she says to herself, and she realizes that she's standing on the floor, irises their normal electric blue, and hair back down in his place.

She looks down at the Spirit Portal, now glistening warm and throbbing steadily like a heartbeat underneath her.

"I did it!" She throws back her head and yells to the dancing skies in a victory cheer. "_I did it_!"

The colors swirling, dancing, up above her wink approvingly down in response.

"I did it," Korra says quietly.

She reclines down on the diamond floor to watch the spirits dance in the sky as they had not for a hundred years.

* * *

"Unalaq!"

She races eagerly into the Southern Water Tribe grounds, excited laughter trailing behind her. "Unalaq, hey!"

Korra had spotted her uncle from the foot of an icy cliff overlooking the Southern Water Tribe. He had been at the top, fingers laced behind his back, his blue eyes flashing as they gazed solemnly over his tribe's southern counterpart.

Without thinking, she had immediately sprinted up to greet him.

"Uncle!"

At that, he turns around, watching her slow to a fast-paced walk with an elated giddiness cloaking her.

He smiles, a smile almost bordering on reality.

"Hello, Korra. I saw what you did last night."

"Yeah! Isn't it great?" She leaps one final pace to face him. "I can go into the Avatar State now! You know what that means, right?" Her smile stretches onto almost dazzlingly bright. "If I can master the Avatar State, you know what's next? Avatar State down, now three elements to go!" She pumps her fists up in the air, expecting for her uncle to congratulate her, pat her on the shoulder, do _something_, but instead he smiles thinly and turns around, head bowed and shoulders hunched.

"Uncle? What's wrong?"

He doesn't move.

He doesn't even seem to breathe.

"What are you looking at?"

He shifts marginally to the left, allowing her to come forward and look.

Korra glances warily at her uncle's stiff countenance, but still shuffles carefully forward on the tip of the precipice to take a glance.

Her lips part in shock.

Ships—no, not ships, _warships_—are pulling into the Southern Water Tribe harbor, leaving trails of froth in their wake. Troops of soldiers are flooding into the ice-capped city, marching _one,two,three,one,two,three,one,two,three_. People are running, fleeing, blind to the sight of the spirits dancing in the sky behind the smoke puffing in generous black clouds from the warships.

The warships are marked with the crest of the Northern Water Tribe.

"Unalaq?" Korra turns to face him, fists balling uncertainly. "What's going on? These are your ships."

His lips press together into a skinny, dark slash.

"What are you _doing_, Unalaq?" Her voice thickens all of a sudden, laced with danger, and she slightly raises her fist, ready to blow the man off the side of the cliff if necessary.

"Opening the spirit portal was only the first step in getting the Southern Water Tribe back on its righteous path." He turns away from her, chin held high. "There's more difficult work to be done before our two tribes are _truly_ united."

Korra's mouth twists into something resembling a snarl. So had her father _really _been right about his wayward brother, all these years? "You won't do this. You _can't_." The air stirs powerfully around them, tearing at their clothes and smoothing cool fingertips through their hair.

"But I have." He makes to step away from her, but before he began his nonchalant descent, he stops to drop a whisper in her ear.

"You may think you control the Avatar State, but once again I'm not surprised to know more than you do. The Avatar State is a fickle thing, uncontrollable and unreliable without the mastery of all four of the elements." He leans closer, his breath practically pattering against her ear. "And you and I both know that that tyrant took away your bending for good and that you will never, ever, no matter how hard you try, find it again." Unalaq then moved back, his eyes gleaming and breathing hard. "Now if you don't mind, dear niece, please move aside so I can get through. Or are you going to blast me off the side of the cliff?"

Korra doesn't move. _Shecan't_breathe_, shecan't_breathe_,she_

_can'tfucking_breathe_. _

"As I thought." Unalaq brushes past her. "Goodbye for now, Korra." And he continues down the cliffside, a familiar smile playing at the edges of his diplomatic mask.

The kind that says, _I win._

"You won't get away with this!" It explodes out of her too late, just as he's halfway down the cliffside. "I'll go back to Republic City, and I'll get the power of the president behind me, and I will _take you down_—just like I took down Amon!" Korra's whole body trembles with fury, breath exploding out of her in furious blasts.

Unalaq slowly turns his head. He lets his triumphant grin overtake his frozen features.

"You're an Avatar without her bending, Korra," he says. "As much as you think there is, there is no extra power behind you. You're just a simple airbender now. What can _you _do to stop _me_?"

And Korra stands there, numbly, and watches as her uncle slims out into a formless black dot sweeping gloatingly into her _tribe_, her _home_, and screams. She churns tornadoes into the cold, still air with the strength of her fury, and forces the water back from the shore with reckless explosions, and melts the snow straight off the side of the craggy cliff with merciless hot blasts, but in the end slumps to her knees, weeping hot tears of what used to be fire down her cheeks.

_I'll get you, _she swears to herself, _I'll _get _you, Uncle._

_ Onetwothree_breathe,_onetwothree_breathe.

* * *

**Sooooo yeah. Hello. Good job, you finished it. **

** And good job on me for finishing it, half of this was just left hanging out in Microsoft Word for a month….**

** Anywho, hopefully I'll be able to condense the rest into three more chapters, bc I'd like for this thing to all be in four chapters because four books. Four elements. You know. It probably won't end up that way, but I'll still try! **

** So please tell me what you think and if you want more, bc each review is a pocketful of sunshine, and thanks for reading, you lovely person you:)**


	2. A Light in the Dark

_There's a rich shade of purple glaring at the edges of her closed vision, and the girl instinctively screws her eyes up against it, brushing her hand over her vulnerable eyelids._

_ Korra._

_ Korra? She wants to say. Who's Korra? But right now all that matters is sleep, and she tips her head back, eager to slip backwards into the welcoming arms of rest—_

_ Korra. Wake up._

_ And before she can get the chance to mutter _sleep, please_, her eyelids flutter tentatively open and her whole body is seized with a convulse of shock. The girl glances downward, left, right, up, and nothing makes sense—she's floating in thin air, standing on nothing with her arms extended and her feet unsupported, surrounded by nothing but a giant smear of inky blueness and the occasional swathe of violet, how is this _possible_—_

_ Korra._

_ At the sound of a voice coming from _somewhere _in all this darkness, she looks up. _

_ A girl stands across from her, surveying her with calm, cool, and kind eyes. Her hair is drawn up, two thick strands bound by blue ties framing her face, and a parka is wrapped loosely around her waist. Her entire profile is outlined in swirls of aqua. An itch of familiarity springs at the back of her head._

_ Her lips move. Who are you?_

_ The girl vaguely smiles. I am you._

* * *

_Who am I?_

* * *

"Whoa, hey!"

Korra manages to pivot just in time to see a rather beefy man trip over his own feet and instinctively reach out his hands in preparation for the fall, colliding into her. She lifts up her own hand, her gut tightening as she wants for a stone wall, an array of rock, to shoot out of the ground and defend her—

But nothing happens. The man crashes into her, very narrowly smashing her head against the wall, and the cakes that she had just bought go flying out of her hands. They shatter into unappetizing sugary bits on the market wall, tumbling to the ground and smearing a coat of white icing into the mortar.

"Oh no. Damn, _damn _it—I am _so _sorry." The man distractedly runs a hand through his stubbly hair, glancing around as if there were something that could help him in the vicinity. "Look, here—" he starts stamping the pastry chunks into the ground, sweeping them off the side of the road. "I'll buy you some more, just give me a minute—"

"It's all right," Korra says to the ground, bending her head forward and coaxing her hood over her face. "Don't worry, it's okay—"

"No, no, no, it'll only take a couple of seconds—" he's already emptying a cascade of yuans into his meaty palm before someone from across the market calls his name. He turns on instinct, and Korra takes that chance to slip out of his sight and into the bubbling brew of people seething in the streets.

Shame. She had _really _been looking forward to those cakes. It would be great to get the salt spray from the Republic City Bay, where she'd ridden in, off her tongue, but really, it was hard enough to keep her face concealed, let alone buy food or water—

A stream of children flowed past, nearly knocking her off her feet, and Korra's jolted back into the present. Right. Focus. She needed a game plan; it wouldn't do anything to just aimlessly wander around the Republic City streets until something popped into her head.

Okay. So. One. As much as she wanted to, she just couldn't barge in on the President and demand his support of the Southern Water Tribe. Not that it wasn't tempting.

Two. So the next highest authority she could go to was Lin Beifong. Of course, like everybody who tuned in to the Republic City radio stations knew, it was common knowledge that Beifong was unable to continue as the metalbending chief of police as the most important part of that title had been taken away by Amon.

Three. So where could she be found? Korra looked up, toward where the sunlight was gleaming in telltale shards off of the steel crown of the metalbenders' headquarters. Would she have found it unbearable to leave her old office and taken up residence there, or would she have found it unbearable to stay in the place anymore and packed up, moved out?

Well. Either way, it was still worth a shot.

So double-checking in a nearby sales window that her face was nicely concealed under the dark of her hood, Korra set out in the direction of the metalbenders' headquarters.

* * *

_You are the Avatar._

…_.I don't know what that is._

* * *

_Onetwothree_breathe,_onetwothree_breathe. "Excuse me, excuse me." Korra jostles her way through a crowd of metalbenders all swimming out the doors eagerly, on their lunch break. She expects to be stopped once or twice and interrogated, but all of the men and women are too busy laughing and joking amongst themselves, separating out in the destinations of their favorite restaurants and cafès.

And then she's alone on the long metal stairwell, untroubled by any member of the police force.

Her footsteps ring long and loudly on the steel slats. One, two, three, one, two, three. The simple rhythm sends images spiraling through her head—soldiers marching through her home village, metallic boots _clacking _sharply on the ice, warships chugging with a deep, rumbling intensity through the water and pulling into harbor—

Something catches in her chest, and Korra shudders. She's almost at the door now. She shakes her head and briskly thinks of positioning herself on that shore and punching her fist out, furious tunnels of wind exploding forth and blasting the ships backward, sending them rocking wildly out of port, taking another hand and throwing another gust of air at the soldiers, or, best of all, sending Unalaq flying off of his feet and into the water—

Korra's lip curls at the thought. If only, she wistfully thinks, she had stayed. After all, no matter what her spirits-damned uncle had said, she _was_ still the Avatar—

—_That tyrant took away your bending for good and that you will never, ever, no matter how hard you try, find it again—_

Korra imagines airbending this thought out of her head too. If she could go into the Avatar State, she thought, firmly squashing the wriggling uncertainties down in her mind, then she _could _master the rest of the elements, too. She was sure of it.

(She can't afford to think anything else.)

The moment she reaches the door, she throws it open, savoring the sound of it _banging _sharply on the stone wall behind her, and sweeps in without a sound of permission.

"I need to see Chief Beifong." Korra leaps into her preplanned speech without a pause. "It's urgent. Where is she?"

The two men who had brought their lunches sit almost comically on top of their desks, faces frozen and sandwiches half-raised to their mouths. As she rocks back on her heels and crosses her arms expectantly, the smaller man one slides to the ground and summons a cheesy smile to his face. "Sorry, but Chief Beifong isn't available right now, er, miss—?"

Oh. Right. Her disguise. Korra's fingers ponder at the edges of her hood before she figures, oh, well. Being the Avatar _did _get you results faster, after all. She yanks her hood back, a spurt of satisfaction leaping in her chest at the chorus of gasps, and cuts to the chase. "Where _is _she?"

The two men, suddenly looking sheepish, swap glances with each other. "We—we don't know?" The taller one says, joining his friend on the floor. "She left the office about an hour ago, before our lunch break. We haven't seen her since." He steps cautiously forward. "A-Avatar Korra, we too would be delighted to help on _any _matter—"

"Korra?"

(And her composure collapses from her skin and smashes into a million tiny pieces on the floor, and she wants to cry, she wants to hit something, but more than anything she wants to _run, Korra, run away_—)

She slowly turns around to face the doorway. "Er, hey, Mako."

(But how can she run away when she can't even _breathe_—)

She scratches the back of her neck to do something, to avoid those eyes, so gold-amber-fiery-orange, staring her down like twin lasers. He's holding a paper bag in his hands—his lunch?—and staring openly at her. Disbelief is traced into every crevice of his face, and Korra keeps her eyes firmly fixed on his shoes.

(Don't look at his eyes, don't look at his eyes, don't remember—)

_Pupils in flame-colored eyes contracting in sheer terror as the dark-haired boy opened his mouth in a deafeningly silent scream—_

"Wh-what're you doing here?" she manages to spit out.

Mako sets the paper bag down on the desk nearest to the door. "I—uh—I work here now." His feet shuffle uncertainly; his fingers drum on the wood grain. "I'm a detective."

_And without her bending, she couldn't do anything, she couldn't move, she couldn't even breathe—_

"Oh. Nice."

"What're you doing here?"

Korra's vaguely aware of the two men behind her gaping, mouthing confused questions urgently at Mako. He ignores them. "I'm. I'm." What is she doing here again? "I'm looking for Beifong. They say she left about an hour ago."

Their eyes meet for a sliver of a second, then immediately repel away. The magnetic current between them is too strong to be concentrating on each other for too long.

_You're the Avatar._

"Um. Yeah. She takes these walks around the city sometimes." Breathe. Onetwothree. Breathe. "So I dunno. Maybe check out Air Temple Island? She'll head out there occasionally."

_I love you._

_(And I'm an idiot.)_

Korra furiously swallows back the nausea slowly creeping up her throat. "All right. I will." Beat. "Thanks."

"No problem."

She can feel her teeth pressuring into her lower lip, so hard that she thinks she can taste blood. "Well. See you around, Mako."

"See you."

Korra turned to face the two flabbergasted cops. "Uh, thanks to you too." They nod, completely dumbfounded, and without wasting a precious moment Korra slips out of the room, shuts the door, and calmly descends the stairs.

It's not until she emerges into broad daylight again that she begins running.

_It's going to be all right, Korra._

_(No, she'd said, every fiber in her body rebelling against feeling reassured, feeling better, being able to breathe._

_It's not.)_

* * *

_In order to remember, you must regain your connection with your Avatar Spirit._

* * *

Pillars of golden light sweep the sky from a distance. Veins of Republic City citizens, benders and non-benders alike, bubble eagerly through the streets as the lamplights dim and the stars begin to pepper the sky, all in the direction of the stadium, blazing like its own painfully brilliant star come crashing to earth. The sizzling of radio static drifts in cloudy wafts through windows, shuttered to keep all the noise of the crowds out, and the betting pools have been open for at least two hours, tensions running high and yuans flowing smoothly, being pocketed by immaculately dressed businessmen with identical gleams in their eyes.

It's pro-bending night.

"—it's the match of the year, folks! The Fire Ferrets, hanging onto their previous fame through the skin of their teeth, are up against the Black Quarry Boar-q-pines!" The announcer's voice pours in a chatty stream of conciousness over the heads of Republic City citizens as they flow through the doorways into the arena. "Even with their old talent and skill, the Fire Ferrets just barely won out in their previous match against the Boar-q-pines—will they be able to score a victory, or will they fall prey to this season's remarkable losing streak?"

The gaudy lights and the river of people around her, so different from the secluded South Pole, briefly overwhelm Korra, and she has to close her eyes to recollect her bearings. _Onetwothree_breathe. Cobalt eyes flutter back open. Everyone around her is settling in their seats, chatting with their friends, or arguing over their thoughts about the outcome of the match. She bites her lip, something that she's been doing a lot of lately, and lets her eyes rove over the arena. No sign of Bolin. He must still be getting ready with his new teammates for the match. The whole crowd is just a seething sea of unfamiliar faces and unwanted pressure.

But as she begins to pivot on her heels, already regretting her decision to put her friends ahead of her tribe, a head of long, wavy black locks easing lithely through the front row snags her eye.

Korra smiles, relieved, underneath the protective shade of her parka hood and, immediately waving all her doubts out of her mind with a nonchalant hand, reaches out to tap the heiress on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," Korra says in a gruff voice, "but have I missed much?"

(And even though she has found her breath in places such as a twisted palace of ice guarding a Spirit Portal and on a craggy cliffside next to her traitorous uncle, it only takes a turn of a graceful head and the slight ripple of flawless black hair to squeeze the breath out of her lungs.)

Asami opens ripely candy-appled lips to answer before she catches sight of who's under the hood and she raises her hand to her mouth as if to stifle a gasp, slightly smudging her lipstick. Her eyes are so wide and shocked that for a second of a second of a second, Korra regrets blowing her cover. (But then the girl smiles, a great rush of relief and brilliance flowing naturally into her face, and Korra feels perfectly justified.)

"Only three _months_," Asami says indignantly, although the corners of her lips were uncontrollably twitching. She pointed to the chair on her left. "Sit down _right _now."

Korra slightly tilts her head to hide her grin and slides down next to Asami. "So." She nudges Asami's slim leg with her foot. "How's Future Corporations?"

Jade green eyes roll. "Great, actually." She nudges her back, a bit more forcefully. "But that's not the point at _all_. Why are you back? What's been happening at the South Pole? And have you been able to—"

Korra knows what the question is. She lowers her head, and her smile sours a bit at its edges. "Well. Not _quite_," she admits before glancing back up. "To be honest, I'd rather hear about what Republic City's been up to in the past three months."

Around them, the crowd surges onto their feet and screams, reverberations shivering in staccato waves through the stands as the teams troop out into the ring, stretching and waving showily to the fans, exposing their rippling muscles to the crowd in as many angles as they can manage. Even when Bolin swirls out into the center, a grin flushing stark onto his face as he punches his fist into the air, the two girls remain glued to their seats. As Asami turns back to her with a practical storm in her eyes, Korra's heart quails and she thinks that even if Equalists plunged through the roof and kidnapped the president, she wouldn't take a single hint of notice.

"You," Asami says, stabbing a finger into the Avatar's face as the earthbending discs are arranged on either side of the ring, "are not getting _any _information about the city until I hear what the Avatar's been up to for the past three _months_."

Korra backs away, hands up and smile tugging haphazardly like an epileptic puppet on the corners of her lips. Far, far away in some foreign country across the sea, the bell _clangs _loudly and clearly and she can't even pay attention long enough to hear the water sluicing eagerly up through cracks in the ring or the rattle of the discs off the metallic rods or the whispering _whooshes _of flame. "Fine, then." _Spirits, how am I going to fit everything in—_"I haven't gotten my bending back yet," she warily admits, treading on unknown grounds as the announcer's voice thunders in torrents over her head. "And…" Beat. _Onetwothree_—"And I'm not sure I ever will." _Breathe_.

"You can still airbend, though, can't you?"

Korra closes her open palm in answer. A course of wind swirls around them, fluttering the edges of Korra's parka and slightly grasping at the line of Asami's scarlet number. Korra ducks under her hood again, a blush tinting her dark cheeks.

"—And the Fire Ferrets are knocked into Zone Two! If they keep this up, this could be one of the quickest and most crushing defeats in pro-bending history, folks, wouldn't you say, Mr. Ying?"

"So…yeah. I _can _airbend." She sighs loudly. "_And_—" Korra shot a sharp glimpse around them; everybody seemed one hundred percent focused on the match—"I can go into the Avatar State. Or, rather," she continues, cutting off Asami's exclamation, "I _have_. I mean, if I wanted to blow the Black Quarry Boar-q-Pines right into the water with the Avatar State, which I totally want to—"

"Korra, you're not watching the game at all. You have literally not even glanced at the arena since we sat down."

"The _point,_" Korra cuts in loudly, "the _point _is that I'm able to go into the Avatar State, just not on will. And…I'm not sure if I can control it yet." She looks down at her shoes. "I'm just—without having mastered all the elements, I'm not sure if I'll _ever _be able to control the Avatar State."

The silence between them stretches on, yawning and threatening to swallow them both even as both Bolin's new teammates are knocked into the water and he's stuck floundering discs at all three Boar-q-pines in Zone Three.

"Also," Korra suddenly says, "my uncle turned out to be evil and now he's invading the Southern Water Tribe. All right, your turn."

"What?" Asami jerks backward. "How is that fair?"

"You withheld information from me _first_, now _spill_. What's been going on in Republic City since I was gone?"

Around them, there's a deafening roar and tumultous crash of mixed applause and boos as Bolin goes hurtling down into the water to join the other Fire Ferrets and the first round _ding-ding-dings _to an end. Asami purses her lips, eyes glossing over in thought.

"It's—well. Not _terrible_. Future Corporations, actually, just struck up a deal with this businessman named Varrick—have you heard of him? He's from the Southern Water Tribe. And he's _huge_ in business—"

"—I could've sworn his name was Vernon—" Korra mutters to herself.

"—So we're doing well. Republic City's still struggling. President Raiko recently started up pro-bending again in order to keep up appearances, but things still aren't great. We've lost a police chief, we've lost a ton of our benders, and—"

"An Avatar," Korra finishes glumly. "Don't worry, I know. And speaking of Beifong, I've been trying to find her. I spent all afternoon scouring the city and—" a shiver wracks up her spine, "—I even went into the metalbenders' headquarters."

"Check Air Temple Island yet?"

"Yeah, that's what everyone's telling me," Korra admits grudgingly. She self-consciously crosses her ankles, twisting her fingers in her lap.

"_—And the Black Quarry Boar-q-pines advance into the third and final round_—!"

"I—I'd like to avoid…being seen by Tenzin or any of his kids, though," Korra reluctantly adds, turning her face away so that she couldn't see the inevitable disapproving curve of Asami's ruby-red, flower-soft, all-too-full lips.

"You're going to have to face Tenzin again one day."

"Yeah, I _know_. Just never thought it would actually come after all my time in the Southern Water Tribe." Down in the painful glare of the arena, the Fire Ferrets' firebender sails over the lip of the third zone and tumbles down into the water, leaving Bolin and the waterbender to desperately fight against going down in the quickest defeat in pro-bending history.

"Well, it did. And you should face Tenzin; it wouldn't be fair to see Lin and not him in his own home."

"_Uuugggghhh_." Korra let her face slip forward into her lap. "I don't even know if Lin is _on _Air Temple Island."

_Goodbye for now. You're just a simple airbender. Remember your patience, Korra. Or are you going to blast me off the side of the cliff? Onetwothree_, breathe_. And you will never, _ever—

Breathe, Korra. Breathe. She pinches her nose between two weary fingers. "This whole thing is a mess." Around them, the entire crowd goes silent as the waterbender trips over his own feet and spirals into the water below, leaving just Bolin defending Zone Three. "I feel like I should be handling everything, because I'm the Avatar and all, but I also can't wait to hand it all off to someone else."

Bolin managed to knock the other earthbender all the way across the court and send him spinning wildly into the water on the other side. The Fire Ferrets' water and firebender are on the lift, dripping silently and sullenly as it slowly clicks upward. The entire arena's breaths are frozen on their lips.

"Don't be ridiculous, Korra." Asami's slender and oh-so-delicate fingers cup Korra's shoulder. "You're talking like you'll have to handle all of this by yourself." The heiress gently squeezes the Water Tribe girl's shoulder. "Of course you won't. You never will."

And before the water and firebender can step off the lift, the Black Quarry firebender meets Bolin's offense with a blast of orange sparks, pulsing blue at its core, and sends Bolin skidding off of the side and into the water, marking the match an official victory for the Black Quarry Boar-q-pines. The entire left side of the stadium surges off of their feet in one collective roar of stamping feet and hoarse cheers, while the entire right side disappointedly counts out the money they owe and throws their popcorn bags on the ground with mutters of "I was sure they'd had it this time" and sullenly shuffles out of the stands.

(And the nonbender and the Avatar remain rooted on their rickety bench in the front row, three months' worth of unspoken words shivering like a palpable being inbetween them, as Korra thrives and breathes the cool relief of fresh, accessible air before Asami's hand slides off her shoulder and her lungs wither into useless stone lumps behind her chest once more.)

* * *

_If you don't—_

* * *

The door to the main air temple takes its sweet, grinding time to clunk its way open, shrieking protestantly all the way. But when it does open, the Avatar stares down the steely-haired police chief, who, to her credit, doesn't let a flicker of surprise cross her face. Instead, she roves over the Avatar with metallic eyes and a rather blank expression.

Then her lips quirk at the edges, and something akin to a spark kindles in her eyes. But then again, Korra thinks almost fondly (but not really, of course) even something as big as the loss of her bending trying to restrain the former metalbending chief would be like trying to stop the sun from rising.

Lin Beifong nods. "Hey, kid."

"Hey, chief." Korra slips her hood off of her head. "Can I come in?"

* * *

_Darkness will engulf the world._

**.**

**.**

**.**

_(__**A light in the dark**__, the girl dreamily thinks, and then, __**the Avatar,**__ knowing somewhere inside herself that they are somehow related, but she just can't—_

Breathe.

* * *

Korra's goal: When she had first mulled it over with Beifong, simplicity itself. 'Borrow' a speedboat from the Republic City harbor and ride back to the South Pole before smuggling out a handful of representatives for her audience with the president—preferably waterbenders, as the tiny speedboat she'd crammed herself on would not hold under the weight of five (hopefully) muscular tribesmen and women.

Korra's issue: Desna and Eska were trying their damndest to keep her from reaching the tribe. And worst of all, they were on their own turf. The moment the water surged under the speedboat, causing it to buckle and lunge forward, Korra's lip slammed into one of the handlebars, her mouth flooding with the metallic taste of blood as she tumbled forward and _smacked _into the water. The speedboat swirled away by way of one of her waterbending cousins' eddies, and Korra stayed perfectly still in the water, facing the sky and hardly daring to breathe as she waited for one of the twins to discover that the speedboat had no rider.

A short length of silence. A soft exclamation of surprise from one of Unalaq's children.

One.

Water bubbled loudly in her ears and along her arms and legs, slight waves from the momentum of Desna and Eska skating through the lake—possibly browsing for the unconscious (or worse) body of their Avatar cousin to take back to their father. Korra repressed a sharp shudder.

Two.

Korra coiled all of her muscles, feeling a sudden rush of air tingle against her fist and take refuge in the inside of her palm, a spinning ball of gaining energy ready to let loose with all the fury of a tornado.

A smear of violet eyes flashed on the horizon.

Three.

Korra lunged up from the water, a funnel of air supporting her, and threw a fistful of air in Desna's general direction. Without even glancing to see where Eska was or where Desna had gone, the funnel of air curled around her legs and then _launched, _spiraling Korra across the water like a horizontal tornado.

_Come on come on come on come on_

From somewhere in the distance, a dormant volcano peaked into the air, shattering slivers of sunlight. The Avatar, bending or no bending, could find refuge on a Fire Nation island. Her cousins had no right to attack her there.

A pillar of ice shot up from the previously balmy and calm lakewater right underneath Korra, ridged with tiny icicles and scales sharp enough to draw blood. Korra threw another desperate armful of wind behind her, satisfied when she heard a startled cry from Eska. The tornado beneath her churned more furiously, kicking up a razor-tipped spray of water droplets on either side of her. The kiss of water on her face stirred an invigorating sort of recklessness behind her chest, something that hadn't awakened since Korra stood ten feet in the air above the Southern Spirit Portal and laughed at the skies.

_I'm going to make it I'm going to make it I'm going to make it_

A quick look tossed behind her. The twins were a good fifteen feet behind Korra, and the tornado beneath her was picking up speed, now practically screaming with energy as it grazed across the tip of the lakewater.

"Korra, stop!" One of the twins shrieked. Probably Eska, but then again, she doubted even their father could tell the difference between them. "We mean well!"

_You should've said that before you threw me off my speedboat! _Korra wants to yell heroically back, but the air spout really is taking a lot out of her. The island, previously a dark speck on the horizon, is now solidifying to an onyx jewel not far away.

_Almost there almost there almost—_

Something's slithering under the water beneath her, she can see its curving dark shape.

_No, no, no, spirits damn it, almost there almost there—_

The shadow begins to darken and ripple under the water's reflection as it begins to rise—

_You're going to make it Korra, you can _make _it—_

A lithe, black serpent body embossed with the gold of the dark spirits spirals into the air, and, as did with the spirits that had attacked her at the South Pole, a long scream trails after it.

One of her cousins cries out something, and they both immediately begin pedaling backwards, waterbending themselves back toward Republic City to leave Korra to fend for herself.

The spirit and the Avatar contemplate each other, the air shimmering between them like a hot and cold front meeting.

_Onetwothree_breathe_, onetwothree_breathe.

The spirits lunges at her in one long, dark spear, and Korra just barely manages to shift the air spout to the side as it grazes her arm. Ignoring the blood streaming behind her, Korra punches an air vortex at it and attempts to weave around the spirit (_get to the island, get to the island, it's your only chance—_)

Something slams, _hard_, into the side of her head, scattering black droplets across her vision and spinning the world into a swirl of black-gold-blue-green, blue-sky-black-monster-_where_, Korra desperately punching air from her fists, spirits damn it, _where is the monster_—

Is the vast mirror of blue she's falling into the sky or the lake? Korra spins wildly in free-fall, grabbing out for something, anything, torrents of wind blasting haphazardly from her palms, desperately feeling inside herself for waterbending, earthbending, firebending, _the Avatar State_—

Please. Korra closes her eyes as best she can against the wind ripping at her clothes and channels her words as loudly as she can to the voices in her head, to the white-hot wrench of power that had once twisted her gut and flooded her bloodstream in a frozen mass of ice not a week ago.

She's almost positive she's falling toward the lake now. Korra can feel the mist of the water left over from the spray that had followed her settling on her face.

_Please_. She begs. Every single muscle in her body tenses, willing her eyes to frost silver, for unspeakable power to bloom, almost too powerful for her own body to hold.

_Please_, Korra thinks weakly just before she crashes headfirst into the water, no time to even breathe, and the blackness lingering at the corners of her periphery eagerly begins to sheen over the Avatar's vision.

…_Please_.

(And then there is no more light, no more Avatar, nothing but darkness.)

* * *

_You will die._

_And our era will end._

* * *

_Go back, the dark-skinned man with the fur coat around his waist says. He reminds the girl of herself._

_Return to the beginning. Find Raava._

_Return where? The girl wants to scream. Panic is building up in her chest, and the man's image is already fading away into the blueness. Find who?_

_But she is slammed into with a sudden course of water and bubbles, and the man is sucked backwards into the neverending smear of blue as if he were never there. The girl flips and tumbles backwards, eyes closed and hands extended in a nauseating feeling of free-fall, as she falls backwards into the vast purple sky without a single solid thing to hold._

_When she stops, the girl is met with a glare of blinding white light through the dark curtain of her closed eyelids, and she reluctantly opens them._

_A dark-haired boy in a simple orange beggar's shirt faces her. He's hovering silently in a bulb of silver, and his smile graces his face like a ray of light._

_Are you Raava? She asks._

_No._

_Her face falls, and the white-hot throbbing in her stomach increases toward painfulness._

_But I can help you find her, the boy says, and he vanishes, moved backward behind the white light. The girl steps forward with her hand outstretched, determined not to lose another guide, and then she's spiraling into a white-hot abyss, spinning, screaming, tumbling through thin air—_

_And her feet slam into beautifully solid ground. Beautiful, solid, red and dusty ground. Up above her head, the sun is almost the same silver shade as the bulb the boy _

_(Wan, Wan, Wan)_

_the boy materialized from, and as she looks up at the sun, so familiar (and yet so different), a shock of black hair bobs across the center of her vision. _

_The boy is carrying a loaf of bread, hugging it to his chest as though it were his lifeline._

_(You're dead, Wan!)_

* * *

_You just gotta accept the world the way it is._

_Some people have power._

_(You don't.)_

* * *

_Powerless, huh?_

_Fire bursts in brilliantly clawing tendrils from the boy's bare hands, and gasps rise like a cloud of heat from the crowds amassed around the scene._

_The smeared darkness of a grin slashes across his face. He has never felt so alive._

_(I'll show you.)_

**No, please! Have mercy!**

_Onetwothree_breathe,Wan. _Onetwothree _breathe.

_(And the boy closes his fists, and the fire's life curls to thin gray smoke spiraling off his once burning fingertips.)_

* * *

_Breathe, Wan, breathe._

_(He can't breathe, there's fire bursting out of his knuckletips and a swirl of teeth grazing his skin, hornets buzzing in a frenzied orbit around his body, running like mad through fields and forests and mountains as his eyes scratched and itched from a burning lack of sleep—)_

_Onetwothree_breathe_, onetwothree_breathe.

_Everything will be all right._

* * *

**She has tormented me for ten thousand years!**

_The breathlessness strains at the spirit's voice like popping tendons, and Wan can practically feel the vice of the white spirit wrapping around his own chest._

_Let him go!_

**_Do you realize what you've done!?_**

* * *

The corner of the girl's pasty lip quirks upward, as though she were in a dream.

"_Raava_." Korra whispers. "_I found you_."

* * *

**How are you feeling since our split, Raava? I've never been better.**

_The malevolent gold eye of the Dark Spirit seems to fasten and lock upon her, and Korra freezes in her place. Terror catches in her chest, the kind of terror she doesn't think she's ever felt before._

**When Harmonic Convergence comes, I will destroy you forever.**

_The Dark Spirit dives away over the ridged back of the Air Lion Turtle, and Korra is able to breathe once more._

_He was not speaking to her, but to Raava. Raava and Wan._

_(But she'd had the strangest feeling he had looked right at her.)_

* * *

**_As darkness grows, light fades._**

_The Avatars shudder together. One thinks of the fire blast that had set thousands of years in motion, and one thinks of a city thousands of years away with almost everything she had ever held dear inside it._

_(__Either way, the world is on the brink of collapse, and the light is fading quickly.)_

**_Harmonic Convergence,_** _the Light Spirit says__. **That is when Vaatu and I must battle for the fate of the world.**_

* * *

_What happened to you? When did you become so violent? _

_(Wan can't breathe, he can't breathe. This is his best friend, his practical _brother_—_)

_You showed me we could change the world if we just stopped being so afraid. Now, we're doing it!_

_The lightning above them swirls in on itself to form a gigantic golden eye. Vaatu's deep voice laughs from somewhere in the black clouds._

_(The powers of Raava flower inside of him, and for a second Wan thinks he's going to burn to a crisp from the inside-out. It's like the core of the sun sizzling through his veins, coals scraping past his throat and skin burning bright-white, the power—it's too much—)_

_Water, earth, fire and air spin around him in an elliptical orbit, and the white-hot fire inside of him, drifts through his skin to frost his eyes and coat his body in a milky haze._

(I'm the Avatar, and you gotta deal with it!)

* * *

**See you at the end of the world!**

….I'm sorry, Wan.

_This is all Raava can offer him._

_This is all Raava can offer the world._

_(I'm sorry.)_

* * *

_Haven't you heard the legends? Fire pricks the inside of his fists like dashes of ember. _

_Wan punches his fist, and swirls of flame shoot out. _

_I'm not a regular human anymore._

* * *

_We have to finish this together!_

_And though Vaatu has flooded the world with darkness, Wan can feel himself burning with light._

**_We are bonded forever._**

_(I will be the bridge between our two worlds.)_

* * *

The world is entering a new age.

The two sides, one a sea of blue, and one a mass of scarlet, advance on each other with murder in their eyes.

Our time protecting mankind is over.

The four elements are no longer separate in this battle. Fire hisses, rocks plunge, air blasts, and water swirls above heads as the Avatar struggles to stop the fighting, the face of Raava emblazoned on his chest.

We will no longer give humans the power of the elements.

* * *

_I'm sorry, Raava._

_Wan looks hopelessly around him. Blood spatters the earth. Trickles of water gurgle halfheartedly from the pouches of dead men. Blazes of shiny fire burn on the skin of warriors. Rocks are scattered over the battlefield, and wind picks up, whispering desolately across the dead-silent field._

_I failed to bring peace._

_He leans his head back, and tears prickle his eyelashes._

_Even with Vaatu locked away, darkness still surrounds humanity._

_Wan's life is ending. He has known it for many years. Raava had done the best she could, but—_

_There wasn't enough _time_._

_Raava's spirit curls in a warm embrace around the Avatar._

Don't worry. We will be together for all of your lifetimes.

_Wan's last breath rattles into his throat. Onetwothree_breathe, _Wan. A smile crooks at the corners of his lips as he thinks of the old mantra._

And we will _never _give up.

_Golden sparks flutter delicately past Wan's pale lips and into the sky, human and spirit, walking together toward a new age and into a new life._

_(And miles and miles away, in an airbending village far up in the mountains, a baby girl's deafening cry splits the air.)_

* * *

Korra's eyes shoot open, and her mouth automatically circles wide to gulp in heavy, desperate draughts of breath. Seemingly, the moment she moves, the thick wooden table holding her above the water begins to creak upward, swinging haphazardly back and forth.

_Eska—Desna—the fight—airbending—the Dark Spirit—_

_ Falling, falling, falling._

All right, onetwothree_breathe_, Korra, remember? Calm down, Avatar. Take in your surroundings.

Twin metallic chains, clicking steadily on either side of her, are pulling up the table. Wet curls of hair are stuck to her damp cheeks. Her hands are no longer nervous and trembling at her sides, but calm and still in her lap. Her body also feels much more refreshed, rid of all her riddling spiritual aches and pains.

Somebody had cleansed her with healing water.

For a moment there's an exhilirating feeling of free-fall fluttering in her stomach, the tingle of fresh possibilites flushing through her blood as Korra holds out her palm and opens it, but there's no flame. The water droplets amassing around her body don't freeze. The rock on the sides of the deep cavern doesn't shift.

It was a long shot, but somewhere in the pit of her stomach Korra can't stop the small flower of hope from wilting with disappointment. _If only, if only_.

When the table finally scrolls up to level ground, Korra remembers everything, and she's gained enough feeling in her legs that she can stand. "Thank you," she says to the elderly woman standing intently by the wooden structure. "Thanks so much."

The woman reaches out a brittle arm, and helps the still-wobbly Korra off of the rising table. For a moment, she stands, eyes narrowed and studying Korra with scrutiny.

"Do you feel better?" she asks.

Korra nods. "I do. I really, really do."

The woman drinks her in. Beat. Onetwothree. Beat. Then an old, toothy smile suddenly floods out on her face.

"You," she says, taking the Water Tribe girl's arm, "are quite welcome."

Korra returns the smile, soft and willing. "I think I'd better go now. And really, thanks for everything."

"You won't stay?"

"No, I'm going to have to leave. Sorry."

"Not even for a cup of tea?"

"Not even for that," Korra replies, and an ice-cold shudder suddenly shoots up her back when she thinks of the emblem of the Northern Water Tribe, glinting dully in the dim firelight on the porcelain surface of a teacup.

The firebender shrugs. "Suit yourself."

Korra watches the gray elastic strands bob away until they are almost gone before the question burning inside slips out. "I'm so sorry to bother you again—"

She huffs. "They always are." But she stops and turns, giving Korra a shred of hope.

"But…is there any way, with you and your healing water…" Breathe _in_, breathe _out_—"Could you possibly cure somebody's loss of bending?"

The woman bows her head to the crystalline shards of the cave floor. "Child, I'm no waterbender. And if I were, I do not even think I could help you even if I were in my prime. If it means anything to you, I am sorry. But there's nothing I can do."

Tears prick her eyes all of a sudden, and Korra hurriedly wipes her ragged sleeve across her face. She doesn't think she's cried since _that night_, and she needed no more reminders.

Besides, this is a stupid place to cry. The woman practically just saved her life.

The woman in question stands there, and watches the girl mop her face on her arm. She finds it fit to ask a simple question. "Who are you?"

Korra glances up from her bare feet, and everything that she had seen in her vision, both the good and the bad, suddenly bursts through to her memory.

She smiles.

"I'm the Avatar," Korra replies.

_And you gotta deal with it_!

* * *

She leaves at first light, face cleansed with the cool spirit water and hair tied back once more, almost feeling a degree of her old self again. The canoe waiting for her had been tied to a nearby rock, a paddle draped over its edge and the restless waters jostling the damp wood up against the raspiness of the stone shore.

Korra delivers an airbending slice to the frayed edge of the rope, and it snaps off the canoe's head without complaint. The boat unsteadily teeters backward until Korra places her heel on top of it, placing her arm over her eyes and squinting up into the sun.

Right about now, the members of her village would normally be out and about fishing, building new houses, and giving waterbending lessons to the younger ones.

Right about now, however, they would be doing all of these things under the baleful watch of the Northern Water Tribe guard.

Right about now, Desna and Eska would have reached the South Pole and brought news to their father. Korra was sure they couldn't know she was alive, they must have seen her tumble into the water with the Dark Spirit, after all. Unalaq would be sure to know right now, to know she was 'dead'. A grin of satisfaction slightly curled the edges of Korra's lips. It was glorious to know something her uncle didn't.

More than anything, though, she thought of her parents. Unalaq and her father had never gotten along, Korra thinks, absently glaring up at the sky. Unalaq would find some reason to jail her father, to punish him for whatever wrong he had ever done. It could be happening right as she was thinking on this sunlit shore. What would become of her mother, then? Would Unalaq spare her?

Korra briskly climbs into the boat. If she spent any more time dwelling over everything, either a) her head might explode or b) she might be tempted to take a dive under the water and wait for that Dark Spirit to come along and take her out of her miseries.

Besides, the Water Tribe girl thinks as she reaches for the paddle and dips it into the water, Harmonic Convergence was coming.

There was still time, but not a lot, and Air Temple Island was several hours away by boat and with no waterbending.

The end of the world, Korra thinks cheerily as she shoves off the rocky shore, is being counted down in days.

(And for the second time that week, the Avatar sets out for Republic City with nothing under her belt but determination and a hopeless hope for something she could never recover.)

* * *

**Hahahaha. I thought this would be four chapters. Hahaha. Hahaha. Ha. Ha. Ha.**

** Nope. I can't even venture a guess at how long this thing's going to be. Hopefully I'll finish out 'rewriting' the second book\season soon though so we can get to the (in my humble opinion) much better BOOK THREE!**

** Also, writing this chapter was as hard to write as brushing my hair, so I apologize for its general terribleness. Plus, Korra's issues with the loss of her bending will be explored more next chapter so bear with me. Right now she's basically clinging for dear life onto the notion that if she can go into the Avatar State, she'll eventually be able to get her control back of the other elements. So there's that.**

** And thanks so so so so so much to the people who fav'd and followed and reviewed and did all that fun stuff, it really makes my day:) You should all be sainted, and I am sorry for this crappy chapter. Here, have some awkwardly written Korrasami. :).**

** As always, thanks for reading!**


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